The present invention relates to a method for the preparation of stabilized cocoa flavored and colored cooked pudding and pie filling mix and the products produced therefrom. More particularly, the invention teaches a dry or powdered cooked-pudding composition containing highly-dutched cocoa (i.e., having a pH of from 7.0 to 8.5) which does not exhibit the occurrence of dark spots upon hydration nor in the prepared pudding product, and which maintains a sharp pie cut and a firm pie texture.
It has been a desire in the art to overcome the relatively poor appearance, texture and mouthfeel which are typically characteristic of cooked puddings containing highly-dutched cocoa. Such cooked puddings were generally found to possess a softer texture and lower viscosity as compared to cooked puddings not containing highly-dutched cocoa, thus resulting in an undesirable inability to maintain a clean pie cut.
Carpenter et al. teach an improvement to the highly-dutched cocoa cooked-pudding art in U.S. Pat. No. 4,262,031, wherein an acidulant was added to the pudding mix resulting in an improvement to the texture and viscosity of the prepared cooked pudding product. However, the Carpenter et al. improvement introduced negative product attributes which would be at least as undesirable to consumers as those attributes sought to be improved upon. Encapsulated food grade acids, used according to Carpenter et at., produced a spotting phenomenon when the hydrated pudding mix containing highly-dutched cocoa was cooked and/or when the pudding product was gelled. Further, when according to Carpenter's preferred embodiment, acid whey is employed as the acidulant, excessive lumping of the acid whey during processing has been found to result.
It is a primary objective of the present invention to eliminate dark spotting upon the hydration and preparation of pudding mixes containing highly-dutched cocoa.
It is a further objective of this invention to formulate a pudding mix containing highly-dutched cocoa which, upon preparation, possesses a good texture, appearance and mouthfeel, and which is able to maintain a clean pie cut.
It is another object of the invention to eliminate the lumping of pudding mix ingredients during processing and thereby to maintain the ingredients in a free-flowing condition.